out >> m_Conscientia; » talk

Feynman’s Messenger Lectures

Alex Peck — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:48:55 +0000

The Feynman lectures provide an accessible insight into the relationship between nature, mathematics and physics. Microsoft has made them available here.

It’s thoroughly captivating; only a genius could provide a geometric proof of the conservation of angular momentum using cock eyed triangles.

Humboldt squid

Alex Peck — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 23:09:30 +0000

Fascinating video.

Computing with a sixth sense

Alex Peck — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 18:08:48 +0000

That isn’t Divina McCall. Cool idea, but I think it would be better with a compact head mounted projector & sensor.

Dependency Injection & Testability

Alex Peck — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 19:01:06 +0000

When objects have no (or few) collaborators it’s relatively easy to get high unit test code coverage. As the number and complexity of collaborators increases, so too does the difficulty in obtaining decent coverage. This talk illustrates why dependency injection principles improve the testability of your code, and ease mock/stub based unit testing.

BDD: Behaviour Driven Development

Alex Peck — Sat, 16 May 2009 23:03:16 +0000

Since this talk was three years ago it is now clear BDD didn’t set the world on fire. That said, I like the focus here on the mindset of the developer. My interpretation of BDD is that the terminology you use affects your development process. It’s not fundamentally different to TDD, rather there is a change in terminology which subtely influences your design process.

The Renaissance Thinker – Øredev 2008

Alex Peck — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 18:15:09 +0000

In chapter 2 of my PhD thesis I considered the parellel between physically based computer animation and the renaissance art bourne out of scientific enquiry. I recall being quite interested in this at the time, but looking back failed to convert a considerable amount of research into more than a sentence.

James Bach makes a more thought provoking comparison between popular opinion throughout the renaissance and conventional testing wisdom. In particular, he makes some solid points about exploratory testing vs static scripts, and how you can improve tests as you learn more about the problem. As a multidisciplinarian, I also subscribe to the idea that you can apply ideas from many seemingly unrelated fields.

Jon Skeet C# talks in København

Alex Peck — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 18:49:25 +0000

Silverlight is required, and I couldn’t get these to work in Firefox.Skip the first one, its just a long intro.

Introduction

Generics, static constructors and nested types, faking Java enums

More generics (constraints, variance), nullable types, iterator blocks

Anonymous methods (captured variables, no-op delegates), introducing C# 3, automatic properties, anonymous types, implicitly typed local variables, object initialisers

Extension methods, lambda expressions, expression trees

LINQ to Objects, Human LINQ, streaming/buffering, deferred/immediate execution, query expression translation, range variables, transparent identifiers, Push LINQ

More expression trees, IQueryable, Visual LINQ, the Builder pattern, Protocol Buffers, Popsicle immutability, readonly automatic properties (wishlist item), the builder pattern as a language feature (wishlist item), immutability.

Expanding a query expression into a big mess, C# 4.0, stored procs vs LINQ, C# and functional programming, collection initializers, non-nullable types (wishlist item), static interfaces (wishlist item), checked exceptions in Java, Aspect-Oriented Programming.

Introduction to Scrum

Alex Peck — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 22:55:45 +0000

I recently started using a scrum process at work which prompted me to dig out this classic reference.